Shofar FTP Archive File: imt/tgmwc//tgmwc-01/tgmwc-01-01.06

Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-01/tgmwc-01-01.06
Last-Modified: 1999/08/16
In the Jewish ghetto from 7th September, 1941, to 6th
July, 1943, over 133,000 persons were tortured and shot.
Mass shooting of the population occurred in the suburbs
of the city and in the Livenitz forest.
In the Ganov camp 200,000 citizens were exterminated.
The most refined methods of cruelty were employed in this
extermination, such as disembowelling and the freezing of
human beings in tubs of water. Mass shooting took place to
the accompaniment of the music of an orchestra recruited
from the persons interned.
Beginning with June, 1943, the Germans carried out
measures to hide the evidence of their crimes. They exhumed
and burned corpses, and they crushed the bones with machines
and used them for fertiliser.
At the beginning of 1944, in the Ozarichi region of the
Bielorussian S.S.R., before liberation by the Red Army, the
Germans established three concentration camps without
shelters, to which they committed tens of thousands of
persons from the neighbouring territories. They
intentionally brought many people to these camps from typhus
hospitals, for the purpose of infecting the other persons
interned and for spreading the disease in territories from
which the Germans were driven by the Red Army. In these
camps there were many murders and crimes.
In the Esthonian S.S.R. they shot tens of thousands of
persons and in one day alone, 19th September, 1944, in Camp
Kloga, the Germans shot 2,000 peaceful citizens. They
burned the bodies on bonfires.
In the Lithuanian S.S.R. there were mass killings of
Soviet citizens, namely in Panerai at least 1,000,000; in
Kaunas more than 70,000; in Alitus about 60,000, at Prenai
more than 3,000; in Villiampol about 8,000; in Mariampol
about 7,000; in Trakai and neighbouring towns 37,640.
In the Latvian S.S.R. 577,000 persons were murdered.
As a result of the whole system of internal order
maintained in all camps, the interned persons were doomed to
die.
In a secret instruction entitled "the internal regime
in concentration camps," signed personally by Himmler in
1941, severe measures or punishment were set forth for the
internees. Masses of prisoners of war were shot, or died
from the cold and torture.
Murders and ill-treatments at places in the Eastern
Countries and in the Soviet Union, other than in the camps
referred to in (a) above, included, on various dates during
the occupation by the German armed forces:
The destruction in the Smolensk region of over 135,000
Soviet citizens.
Among these, near the village of Kholmetz of the Sychev
region, when the military authorities were required to
remove the mines from an area, on the order of the Commander
of the 101st German Infantry Division, Major-General Fizler,
the German soldiers gathered the inhabitants of the village
of Kholmetz and forced them to remove mines from the road.
All of these people lost their lives as a result of
exploding mines.
In the Leningrad region there were shot and tortured over
172,000 persons, including over 20,000 persons who were
killed in the city of Leningrad by the barbarous artillery
barrage and the bombings.
[Page 24]
In the Stavropol region in an anti-tank trench close to the
station of Mineralny Vody, and in other cities, tens of
thousands of persons were exterminated.
In Pyatigorsk many were subjected to torture and criminal
treatment, including suspension from the ceiling and other
methods. Many of the victims of these tortures were then
shot.
In Krasnodar some 6,000 civilians were murdered by poison
gas in gas vans, or were shot and tortured.
In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were
killed and tortured. After the Germans were expelled from
Stalingrad, more than a thousand mutilated bodies of local
inhabitants were found with marks of torture. One hundred
and thirty-nine women had their arms painfully bent backward
and held by wires. From some their breasts had been cut off,
and their ears, fingers and toes had been amputated, The
bodies bore the marks of burns. On the bodies of the men the
five-pointed star was burned with an iron or cut with a
knife. Some were disembowelled.
In Orel over 5,000 persons were murdered.
In Novgorod and in the Novgorod region many thousands of
Soviet citizens were killed
by shooting, starvation and torture. In Minsk tens of
thousands of citizens were similarly killed.
In the Crimea peaceful citizens were gathered on barges,
taken out to sea and drowned, over 144,000 persons being
exterminated in this manner.
In the Soviet Ukraine there were monstrous criminal acts of
the Nazi conspirators. In Babi Yar, near Kiev, they shot
over 100,00 men, women, children and old people. In this
city in January, 1941, after the explosion in German
headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street the Germans arrested as
hostages 1,250 - persons old men, minors, women with nursing
infants. In Kiev they killed over 195,000 persons.
In Rovno and the Rovno region they killed and tortured over
100,000 peaceful citizens.
In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot
or threw alive into a great ravine 11,000 women, old men and
children.
In the Kamenetz-Podolsk region 31,000 Jews were shot and
exterminated, including 13,000 persons brought there from
Hungary.
In the Odessa region at least 200,000 Soviet citizens were
killed.
In Kharkov about 195,000 persons were either tortured to
death, shot or gassed in gas vans.
In Gomel the Germans rounded up the population in prison,
and tortured and tormented them, and then took them to the
centre of the city and shot them in public.
In the city of Lyda in the Grodnen region on 8th May, 1942,
5,670 persons were completely undressed, driven into pens in
groups of 100 and then shot by machine guns. Many were
thrown in the graves while they were still alive.
Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly
destroyed even children. They killed them with their
parents, in groups and alone. They killed them in children's
homes and hospitals, burying the living in the graves,
throwing them into flames, stabbing them with bayonets,
poisoning them, conducting experiments upon them, extracting
their blood for the use of the German Army, throwing them
into prison and Gestapo torture chambers and concentration
camps, where the children died from hunger, torture, and
epidemic diseases.
From 6th September to 24th November, 1942, in the region of
Brest, Pinsk, Kobryn, Dyvina, Maloryta and Bereza-Kartuzka
about 400 children were shot by German punitive units.
In the Yanov camp in the city of Lwow the Germans killed
8,000 children in two months.
In the resort of Tiberda the Germans annihilated 500
children suffering fromtuberculosis of the bone, who were in
the sanatorium for the cure.
[Page 25]
On the territory of the Latvian S.S.R. the German usurpers
killed thousands of children, whom they had brought there
with their parents from the Byelo-Russian S.S.R., and from
the Kalinin, Kaluga and other regions of the R.S.F.S.R.
In Czechoslovakia, as a result of torture, beating, hanging,
and shooting, there were annihilated in Gestapo prisons in
Brno, Seim and other places over 20,000 persons. Moreover
many thousands of internees were subjected to criminal
treatment, beatings and torture.
Both before the war, as well as during the war, thousands of
Czech patriots, in particular Catholics and Protestants,
lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., were arrested as hostages
and imprisoned. A large number of these hostages were killed
by the Germans.
In Greece in October, 1941, the male populations between 16
and 60 years of age of the Greek villages Amelofito,
Kliston, Kizonia Mesevunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzillon and Kato-
Kerzilion were shot-in all 416 persons.
In Yugoslavia many thousands of civilians were murdered.
Other examples are given under paragraph (D), "Killing of
Hostages," below.
THE PRESIDENT: Paragraph (B) on page 16 was read by the
Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic. Paragraph 2 on
page 17 was omitted by him. So had you better not go on at
paragraph 2 at page 17?
CAPTAIN KUCHIN:
2. From the Eastern Countries
The German occupying authorities deported from the Soviet
Union to slavery about 4,978,000 Soviet citizens.
750,000 Czechoslovakian citizens were taken away for forced
labour outside the Czechoslovak frontiers in the interior of
the German war machine.
On 4th June, 1941, in the city of Zagreb (Yugoslavia) a
meeting of German representatives was called with the
Councillor Von Troll presiding. The purpose was to set up
the means of deporting the Yugoslav population from
Slovenia. Tens of thousands of persons were deported in
carrying out this plan.
(C) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR
THE PRESIDENT: Will you read paragraph 2 at page 18?
CAPTAIN KUCHIN:
2. In. the Eastern Countries:
At Orel prisoners of war were exterminated by starvation,
shooting, exposure, and poisoning.
Soviet prisoners of war were murdered en masse on orders
from the High Command and the Headquarters of the SIPO and
SD. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were
tortured and murdered at the "Cross Lazaret" at Slavuta.
In addition, many thousands of the persons referred to in
paragraph VIII (A)2, above, were Soviet prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured were handed
over to SIPO and SD for shooting.
Frenchmen fighting with the Soviet Army who were captured
were handed over to the Vichy Government for "proceedings."
In March, 1944, fifty R.A.F. officers who escaped from
Stalag Luft III at Sagan, were murdered when captured.
In September, 1941, 11,000 Polish officers, who were
prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near
Smolensk.
In Yugoslavia the German Command and the occupying
authorities in the person of the chief officials of the
Police, the SS troops (Police Lieutenant General Rosener)
and the Divisional Group Command (General Kubler and others)
in the period 1941-43 ordered the shooting of prisoners of
war.
[Page 26]
THE PRESIDENT: Now paragraph 2 of (D).
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL J. A. OZOL (continuing the reading of the
indictment):
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in
October, 1941.
At Kraljevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you turn now to (E), paragraph 2, page
21 ?
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL OZOL:
2. Eastern Countries:
During the occupation of the Eastern Countries the German
Government and the German High Command carried out, as a
systematic policy, a continuous course of plunder and
destruction including:
On the territory of the Soviet Union the Nazi conspirators
destroyed or severely damaged 1,710 cities and more than
70,000 villages and hamlets, more than 6,000,000 buildings
and rendered homeless about 25,000,000 persons.
Among the cities which suffered most destruction are
Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk,
Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don,
Stalino and Leningrad.
As is evident from an official memorandum of the German
Command, the Nazi conspirators planned the complete
annihilation of entire Soviet cities. In a completely secret
order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff 1A No. 1601/41,
dated 29.IX.1941) addressed only to staff officers, it was
said:
"The Fuehrer has decided to erase St. Petersburg from the
face of the earth. The existence of this large city will
have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed.
Finland has also said that the existence of this city on her
new border is not desirable from her point of view. The
original request of the Navy that docks, harbour, etc.,
necessary for the fleet be preserved - is known to the
Supreme Commander of the Military Forces but the basic
principles of carrying out operations against St. Petersburg
do not make it possible to satisfy this request.
It is proposed to approach near to the city and to destroy
it with the aid of an artillery barrage from weapons of
different calibres and with long air attacks ...
The problem of the lives of the population and of their
provisioning is a problem which cannot and must not be
decided by us.
In this war ... we are not interested in preserving even a
part of the population of this large city."
The Germans destroyed 427 museums, among them the wealthy
museums of Leningrad, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Novgorod,
Poltava and others.
In Pyatigorsk the art objects brought there from the Rostov
museum were seized.
The losses suffered by the coal mining industry alone in the
Stalin region amount to 2,000,000,000 roubles. There was
colossal destruction of industrial establishments in
Malerevka, Carlovka, Yeliakievo, Monstantinovka, Kariupol,
from which most of the machinery and factories were removed.
Stealing of huge dimensions and the destruction of
industrial, cultural and other property was typified in
Kiev. More than 4,000,000 books, magazines and manuscripts
(many of which were very valuable and even unique) and a
large number of artistic productions and divers valuables
were stolen and carried away.
Many valuable art productions were taken away from Riga.
The extent of the plunder of cultural valuables is evidenced
by the fact that 100,000 valuable volumes and seventy cases
of ancient periodicals and precious monographs were carried
away by Rosenberg's staff alone.
Among further examples of these crimes are:
Wanton devastation of the city of Novgorod and of many
historical and artistic monuments there. Wanton devastation
and plunder of the city of Rovno and of
[Page 27]
its province. The destruction of the industrial, cultural
and other property in Odessa. The destruction of cities and
villages in Soviet Karelia. The destruction in Esthonia of
cultural, industrial and other buildings.
The destruction of medical and prophylactic institutes, the
destruction of agriculture and industry in Lithuania, the
destruction of cities in Latvia.
The Germans approached monuments of culture, dear to the
Soviet people, with special hatred. They broke up the
estate of the poet Pushkin in Mikhailova-koye, desecrated
his grave, and destroyed the neighbouring villages and the
Svyatogor monastery.
They destroyed the estate and museum of Leo Tolstoi,
"Yasnaya Polyana" and desecrated the grave of the great
writer. They destroyed, in Klin, the museum of Tchaikovsky
and, in Penaty, the museum of the painter Repin and many
others.
The Nazi conspirators destroyed 1,670 Greek Orthodox
Churches, 237 Roman Catholic Churches, 67 Chapels, 532
Synagogues, etc.
They also broke up, desecrated and senselessly destroyed the
most valuable monuments of the Christian Church, such as the
Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Novy Jerusalem in the Istrin
region, and the most ancient monasteries and churches.
Destruction in Esthonia of cultural, industrial and other
premises; burning down of many thousands of residential
buildings; removal of 10,000 works of art; destruction of
medical and prophylactic institutions. Plunder and removal
to Germany of immense quantities of agricultural stock
including horses, cows, pigs, poultry, beehives and
agricultural machines of all kinds.
Destruction of agriculture, enslavement of peasants and
looting of stock and produce in Lithuania.

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